DOCSLIB.ORG

15 Americans Edited by Dorothy C

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

15 Americans Edited by Dorothy C. Miller, with statements by the artists and others Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Date 1952 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by Simon & Schuster Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3294 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK 5 x AMERICANS LIBRARY Museumof ModernArt ARCHIVE KEASERE TURNTOT HEO FFICEOF MONROE WHEELER 5 ! AMERICANS . BAZIOTES CORBETT DICKINSON FERBER GLASCO PAGES 12-14 6-7 42-44 10-1 1 33-35 KATZMAN KIESLER KRIESBERG LIPPOLD POLLOCK 38-39 8-9 36-37 7-29 2 15-17 ROSE ROTHKO STILL TOMLIN WILFRED 40-41 18-20 21-23 24-26 30-32 EDITED BY DOROTHY C. MILLER WITH STATEMENTS BY THE ARTISTS AND OTHERS 5 J AMERICANS THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK ACKNOWLEDGMENTS On behalf of the Trustees of the Museum of Modern Lily van Ameringen. I also wish to thank Witten- Art, I wish to express my gratitude to the artists for born, Schultz, Inc. for permission to quote the help in assembling their work for this exhibition statement by William Baziotes published in Possi and for contributing statements for the catalog; to bilities 1 (Problems of Contemporary Art, No. 4), the collectors, museums and dealers whose gener winter 1947-48; Ruth and John Stephan for per osity in lending has made the exhibition possible mission to quote two statements by Mark Rothko and whose names appear on page 45. Grateful published in The Tiger's Eye, December 1947, and acknowledgment is made to Mr. Alfonso Ossorio October 1949; the American Society for Aesthetics and to Mr. Edward W. Root for their statements and Dr. Thomas Munro for permission to quote on Pollock and Tomlin; to Mr. Charles C. Cun from articles by Thomas Wilfred published in 1'he ningham, Mr. Charles Egan, Mr. Henry Elkan, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, June 1947 and Dr. Max Gruenewald, Mr. Robert Beverly Hale, December 1948; Harper's Bazaar for the photograph Mr. Donald W. Laging, Mr. Frederick B. Robin of Frederick Kiesler's sculpture. son, Mr. Ben Rose, Mr. William B. H. Sawyer, DOROTHY C. MILLER Mr. Clay Spohn, Mr. Joseph S. Trovato and Miss Director of the Exhibition TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART JOHN HAY WHITNEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD; S. PALEY, MRS. E. B. PARKINSON, MRS. CHARLES S. HENRY ALLEN MOE, 1ST VICE-CHAIRMAN; PHILIP L. PAYSON, ANDREW CARNDUFF RITCHIE, DAVID ROCKE GOODWIN, 2ND VICE-CHAIRMAN; NELSON A. ROCKE FELLER, BEARDSLEY RUML, JOHN L. SENIOR, JR., FELLER, president; mrs. david m. levy, ist vice- JAMES THRALL SOBY, EDWARD M. M. WARBURG, president; ALFRED H. BARR, JR., MRS. ROBERT WOODS MONROE WHEELER BLISS, WILLIAM A. M. BURDEN, STEPHEN C. CLARK, RENE D'HARNONCOURT, MRS. EDSEL B. FORD, A. HONORARY TRUSTEES CONGER GOODYEAR, MRS. SIMON GUGGENHEIM, FREDERIC CLAY BARTLETT, MRS. W. MURRAY CRANE, WALLACE K. HARRISON, JAMES W. HUSTED, MRS. DUNCAN PHILLIPS, PAUL J. SACHS, MRS. JOHN S. ALBERT D. LASKER, MRS. HENRY R. LUCE, RANALD H. SHEPPARD MACDONALD, MRS. G. MACCULLOCH MILLER, WILLIAM Copyright ig$2 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Printed in the United States of America FOREWORD Fifteen Americans is one of a series of exhibitions initiated by the Museum of Modern Art in 1929, the year of its founding. Like the others in the series this exhibition follows a pattern devised at that time: to present the work of a limited number of artists, devoting considerable space, in some instances a whole gallery, to the work of each one. In contrast with the cross-sections of contemporary American art held annually by many museums in which a large number of artists are represented by one work each, this pattern has been found to give a broader and more effective view of individual achievement. The series began in 1929 with Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans and continued in 1930 with Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans. After a num ber of more general American exhibitions held during the 1930s, the Museum presented Americans 1942, which showed eighteen artists then working outside New York. American Realists and Magic Realists, 1943, was the only exhibition of the series devoted to a specific kind of painting; while Fourteen Americans, 1946, reviewed the work of artists of diverse styles, as had the earlier shows. Fifteen Americans, 1952, again brings together a group of distinguished artists of marked individuality and widely differing aims. Their achievement may indicate trends in our art today, but to discover and illustrate such trends was not the primary intention behind the exhibition. The purpose was rather to give each artist an opportunity to speak to the Museum's public, in clear and individual terms, through a strong presentation of his work. American art is rich in diversity. It is rich too in the mastery of techniques, a mastery which frees the artist for his main effort, the creation of form and symbol to express the quality and dimension of his experience. In the work of certain artists in Fifteen Americans—Dickinson, Rose, Katzman —experience and its expression are related to the world the artist sees about him. Others — Baziotes, Kiesler, Ferber, and Pollock in some of his latest pictures —even when dealing primarily with abstract forms, evoke vivid associations with the objective world. The work of Glasco and of Kriesberg seems to fall between these two groups. Rothko, Still, much of Pollock, Tomlin, Corbett, Lippold and Wilfred fall within the category usually called abstract, which, as many competent observers have remarked, is the dominant trend in mid- century American painting. Classification of this kind is apt to be inaccurate. If it does not mislead the public it usually annoys the artist, particularly since so many of its terms can scarcely be defined. To this show of the work of fifteen painters and sculptors, separately exhibited, the artists' own statements, thoughtful, evocative, poetic, will prove the best introduction. D. C. M. 5 EDWARD CORBETT opposite: Edward Corbett: Number u. 1951. Chalk, 34^8 x 22 . La Galeria Escondida, Taos, New Mexico left: Edward Corbett: Number 13. 195 1. Chalk and casein, 27 x 14". La Galeria Escondida, Taos, New Mexico Born Chicago, 1919. Son of Army officer; as a child, lived in Washington, D.C.; at Army posts in San Antonio and Laredo, Texas; the Philippines; Ohio; Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Went to high school at Tombstone, Arizona, and Richmond, California. Studied at California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1938-40. U.S. Army, 1941 ; Merchant Marine, 1942-44. In New York, 1944-46. To San Francisco, 1946. Taught at San Francisco State College, 1947, California School of Fine Arts, 1947- 51, and University of California, 1950. Returned to the Southwest, 1951; now lives in Taos, New Mexico. In group exhibitions: San Francisco mu seums. from 1947; American Abstract Artists, New York, 1947; Art Institute of Chicago, 1947; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, 1950. magm mm. I intend my work as poetry. EDWARD CORBETT 7 CORBETT FREDERICK KIESLER Note on Correalism: consciousness would manifest itself in every type of life-activity and so, naturally, in painting, sculpting, My sculpture is a practical sculpture. It is both to building. be lived with and within. I find my paintings consisting of many paintings, Sculpture should be touched not by the eye alone. smaller and larger units, separated from each other It should be enjoyed not only esthetically but through intervals of varying dimensions, yet be physically as well. This is a sculpture for relaxation. longing together as one cluster, one nova, one galaxy. My sculptures I also see as consisting of It has always been difficult for me to separate arti divergent chunks of matter, held together yet apart, facts from facts. Sculpture, painting, architecture appearing like galactic structures, * each part lead should not be used as wedges to split our experience ing a life of coexistence, of correality with the of art and life; they are here to link, to correlate, to others. Yet this correlation, whether close or far bind dream and reality. To separate sculpture and apart, does not necessarily depend on physical links. painting from the flow of our daily environment is As in wireless electricity, there is correlation with to put them on pedestals, to shut them up in frames, out connection. These "endless" paintings and thus destroying their integrative potentialities and sculptures lead a life of inner cohesion. Between arresting their continuity with our total mode of these corporeal units there lie the various empty life. fields of tension that hold the parts together like planets in a void. The debacle of art as a necessity today is caused by its separation from daily living, its isolation. During FREDERICK KIESLER the past fifty years it has exhibited the exciting flare-up of a flame before extinction. The new flame *It was some time ago that I first worked on the will be kindled by the reawakening of our primor structural principle of "tensions in free space" and dial awareness of the interrelatedness of man and wrote about it in the review De Stijl, Paris, 1925. nature, by a new consciousness of belonging- The term correalism in its relation to nuclear con together, of coexistence in spite of apartness in cepts appeared first in my paper on the Laboratory space-time, of interdependence beyond such eco for Design Correlation at Columbia University in nomic and social factors as now separate us.
Recommended publications
  • A Stellar Century of Cultivating Culture

    A Stellar Century of Cultivating Culture

    COVERFEATURE THE PAAMPROVINCETOWN ART ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM 2014 A Stellar Century of Cultivating Culture By Christopher Busa Certainly it is impossible to capture in a few pages a century of creative activity, with all the long hours in the studio, caught between doubt and decision, that hundreds of artists of the area have devoted to making art, but we can isolate some crucial directions, key figures, and salient issues that motivate artists to make art. We can also show why Provincetown has been sought out by so many of the nation’s notable artists, performers, and writers as a gathering place for creative activity. At the center of this activity, the Provincetown Art Associ- ation, before it became an accredited museum, orga- nized the solitary efforts of artists in their studios to share their work with an appreciative pub- lic, offering the dynamic back-and-forth that pushes achievement into social validation. Without this audience, artists suffer from lack of recognition. Perhaps personal stories are the best way to describe PAAM’s immense contribution, since people have always been the true life source of this iconic institution. 40 PROVINCETOWNARTS 2014 ABOVE: (LEFT) PAAM IN 2014 PHOTO BY JAMES ZIMMERMAN, (righT) PAA IN 1950 PHOTO BY GEORGE YATER OPPOSITE PAGE: (LEFT) LUCY L’ENGLE (1889–1978) AND AGNES WEINRICH (1873–1946), 1933 MODERN EXHIBITION CATALOGUE COVER (PAA), 8.5 BY 5.5 INCHES PAAM ARCHIVES (righT) CHARLES W. HAwtHORNE (1872–1930), THE ARTIST’S PALEttE GIFT OF ANTOINETTE SCUDDER The Armory Show, introducing Modernism to America, ignited an angry dialogue between conservatives and Modernists.
  • Scott Burton

    Scott Burton

    SCOTT BURTON COLLECTED WRITINGS ON ART & PERFORMANCE, 1965–1975 EDITED BY DAVID J. GETSY SOBERSCOVE PREss CHICAGO Soberscove Press 1055 N Wolcott, 2F Chicago, IL 60622 USA www.soberscovepress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations and images in review, without prior permission from the publisher or copyright holders. Introduction, transcriptions/annotations, and the selection of texts in Scott Burton: Collected Writings on Art and Performance, 1965–1975 © 2012 David J. Getsy. Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945896 Burton, Scott, 1939–1989 Scott Burton: collected writings on art and performance, 1965–1975 / edited by David J. Getsy. First Printing, 2012 Design by Rita Lascaro ISBN-13: 978-0-9824090-4-6 CONTENTS Introduction: The Primacy of Sensibility: Scott Burton writing on art and performance, 1965–1975 by David J. Getsy 1 I. Beyond Minimalism 33 Tony Smith: Old Master at the New Frontier (1966) 35 Tony Smith and Minimalist Sculpture (1967) 45 Ronald Bladen (1967) 69 When Attitudes Become Form: Notes on the New (1969) 71 Time on Their Hands (1969) 79 II. Abstraction and Allusion 87 David Weinrib: See-Through Sculpture (1967) 89 Ralph Humphrey: A Different Stripe (1968) 94 Al Held: Big H (1968) 103 Adja Yunkers: The Eye’s Edge (1968) 112 Doug Ohlson: In The Wind (1968) 115 Leon Berkowitz: Color It Berkowitz (1969) 121 Willem de Kooning’s Gotham News (1969) 125 Generation of Light, 1945–70 (1971) 128 Plates 141 III. Figurative and Realist Commitments 153 Anne Arnold’s Animals (1965) 155 John Button (1967) 162 Robert Beauchamp: Paint the Devil (1966) 171 American Realism: Letter to the Editors of Artforum (1967) 176 Herman Rose: Telling and Showing (1967) 178 George McNeil and the Figure (1967) 185 Alex Katz (1968) 189 Direct Representation: Five Younger Realists (1969) 195 The Realist Revival (1972) 200 IV.
  • William Baziotes Sketchbooks (Microfilm)

    William Baziotes Sketchbooks (Microfilm)

    William Baziotes sketchbooks (microfilm) Archives of American Art 750 9th Street, NW Victor Building, Suite 2200 Washington, D.C. 20001 https://www.aaa.si.edu/services/questions https://www.aaa.si.edu/ Table of Contents Collection Overview ........................................................................................................ 1 Administrative Information .............................................................................................. 1 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 2 Biographical / Historical.................................................................................................... 1 Names and Subjects ...................................................................................................... 2 Container Listing ...................................................................................................... William Baziotes sketchbooks (microfilm) AAA.baziwills Collection Overview Repository: Archives of American Art Title: William Baziotes sketchbooks (microfilm) Identifier: AAA.baziwills Date: 1933 Creator: Baziotes, William, 1912-1963 Extent: 1 Microfilm reel (2 volumes on partial microfilm reel1) Language: Undetermined . Administrative Information Acquisition Information Lent for microfilming 1998 by John Castagno, a dealer who purchased the sketchbooks at auction. The auctioneer's label (Pennypacker-Andrews Auction Centre, N.Y.) affixed to each cover identifies the sketchbooks: "From
  • The Expanded Image: on the Musicalization of the Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century Sandra Naumann

    The Expanded Image: on the Musicalization of the Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century Sandra Naumann

    The Expanded Image: On the Musicalization of the Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century Sandra Naumann Sandra Naumann, The Expanded Image: On the Musicalization of the Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, in: Dieter Daniels, Sandra Naumann (eds.), Audiovisuology, A Reader, Vol. 1: Compendium, Vol. 2: Essays, Verlag Walther König, Köln 2015, pp. 504-533. 505 Exposition Until well into the nineteenth century, the experience of audiovisual arts was bound to a unity of space and time (and action, too, in a certain sense). The technical media of photography, gramophone recording, silent film, talking film, and video made it possible to reproduce sounds and images, but they also separated them only to slowly reunite them again. These media evolved from devices used purely for storage and reproduction into performative instru- ments for creating new forms of audiovisual experience in real time, a process reinforced through numerous efforts to synthesize or expand the arts by incor- porating or transferring concepts and techniques from different art forms. Thus, musical theories and techniques were adopted to explain developments in the visual arts, and vice versa. Against this general background, this essay aims to identify strategies which the visual arts borrowed from music while changing and expanding compul- sively during the twentieth century. The focus will not be on image/sound com- binations, although sound does often play a part in the works that will be dis- cussed in the following. Instead, this text will deal with the musicalization of the image in a broader sense. These endeavors first culminated in the 1910s and 1920s, then again in the 1960s and 1970s, and for the third time from the 1990s until today.
  • Classical Myths and American Abstract Expressionism: the Case of William Baziotes

    Classical Myths and American Abstract Expressionism: the Case of William Baziotes

    http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-0319.19.08 Mercedes AGUIRRE Universidad Complutense di Madrid CLASSICAL MYTHS AND AMERICAN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: THE CASE OF WILLIAM BAZIOTES MITOS CLASICOS Y EXPRESIONISMO ABSTRACTO NORTEAMERICANO: EL CASO DE WILLIAM BAZIOTES El expresionismo abstracto puede ser visto como una expresión válida de la crisis del ‘hombre moderno’ y, como resultado de ello, asumió un papel central en el debate cultural de la época. Dentro de la crisis del hombre de entonces se enmarca también la nueva forma en que se representan los antiguos mitos. William Baziotes, un artista perteneciente al grupo de la New York School, se convierte en un moderno ‘constructor de mitos’ que crea metáforas y símbolos recurriendo a las culturas antiguas o primitivas o a mundos primigenios. Algunos de los cuadros de Baziotes aluden específicamente a un personaje o mito clásico, por ejemplo ‘Cíclope’, otros, sin tener un título que se refiera expresamente a un mito, parecen tener afinidades con ellos, de manera que los mitos clásicos parecen estar unidos a los propios e íntimos mitos del artista, interpretados con su propio lenguaje y sus propios símbolos. Palabras clave: Expresionismo abstracto, Baziotes, mitos, cíclope, ojo During the 19th and 20th centuries, and particularly in the context of artistic avant-garde movements in Europe and America, there is a break in the language of visual representation which is gradually liberating itself from the realistic and the figurative. Mythological painting – which, although inspired by themes from a world of unreality and fantasy, was fed by real images and forms – was transformed through new perspectives, incorporating symbolic and distorted images, so that the relationship between art and myth became less obvious (on myth in 20th century art, for instance, Bernstock 1993: 153–183).
  • The Cultural Cold War the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

    The Cultural Cold War the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

    The Cultural Cold War The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters FRANCES STONOR SAUNDERS by Frances Stonor Saunders Originally published in the United Kingdom under the title Who Paid the Piper? by Granta Publications, 1999 Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2000 Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press oper- ates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in in- novative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable. The New Press, 450 West 41st Street, 6th floor. New York, NY 10036 www.thenewpres.com Printed in the United States of America ‘What fate or fortune led Thee down into this place, ere thy last day? Who is it that thy steps hath piloted?’ ‘Above there in the clear world on my way,’ I answered him, ‘lost in a vale of gloom, Before my age was full, I went astray.’ Dante’s Inferno, Canto XV I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere. William Congreve, Love for Love Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................... v Introduction ....................................................................1 1 Exquisite Corpse ...........................................................5 2 Destiny’s Elect .............................................................20 3 Marxists at
  • Second 1967 Show Aug

    Second 1967 Show Aug

    SECOND 1967 SHOW AUG. 3 - SEPT. 4 PROVINCETOWN ART Association N FIFTY-THIRD SEASON PRICE 25c SHORE GALLERIES 179 Newbury St., Boston Telephone 262-3910 Notice to friends and visitors This summer, after twenty-me consecutive seasons in Provincetown, we will keep open only our Boston gallery, which is fully air-conditioned and only a two hour drive with parking nearby. During July we will be open Monday through Friday from 1O:OO A. M. to 5 :30 P. M. (closed August until about mid-September) The Gallery will have a fine selection of works, a number of outstanding contemporaries, including Ruth Cobb, William Maynard, James Wingate Parr, William Preston, Romanos Rizk, Howard Schafer, Laurence Sission, William Thompson ma! Steven Trefonides. The Gallery represents the estates of Charles W. Hawthorne (1872-1930) adJohn Whorf (1903-1959). Also, selected 19th adearly 20th cen- tury American paintings We hope to see you. Robert B. Campbell, director Robert R. Campbell, associate special display at Colonial Inn, Provincetown We cordially invite you to visit our new and enlarged galleries The Greenwich Gallery New York City Provincetown Featuring a resident gallery group of contemporary American painters and sculptors Commercial Street Provincetown Phone Open Daily and Evenings Design Craft gambella in leather HAND CRAFTED BAGS and BELTS Commercial and Pearl Streets Provincetown, Massachusetts S. OSBORN BALL REAL ESTATE Commercial St. Provincetown Tel. Gold Pendants Necklaces Ceramics MEXICO PANAMA African Primitive Art Commercial Provincetown, Mass. New York City By appointment only For the Gathering Place AND RIGHT NEXT DOOR of your friends Lucille and Vivian The Everbreeze “The Most Exciting Commercial Street Women’s Clothes on Cape Cod BREAKFAST LUNCHEON visit DINNER Also our PROVINCETOWN INN Hours A.
  • Oral History Interview with Raphael Soyer, 1981 May 13-June 1

    Oral History Interview with Raphael Soyer, 1981 May 13-June 1

    Oral history interview with Raphael Soyer, 1981 May 13-June 1 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Funding for this interview was provided by the Wyeth Endowment for American Art. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Raphael Soyer on May 13, 1981. The interview was conducted by Milton Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview Tape 1, side A MILTON BROWN: This is an interview with Raphael Soyer with Milton Brown interviewing. Raphael, we’ve known each other for a very long time, and over the years you have written a great deal about your life, and I know you’ve given many interviews. I’m doing this especially because the Archives wants a kind of update. It likes to have important American artists interviewed at intervals, so that as time goes by we keep talking to America’s famous artists over the years. I don’t know that we’ll dig anything new out of your past, but let’s begin at the beginning. See if we can skim over the early years abroad and coming here in general. I’d just like you to reminisce about your early years, your birth, and how you came here. RAPHAEL SOYER: Well, of course I was born in Russia, in the Czarist Russia, and I came here in 1912 when I was twelve years old.
  • The Emergence of Abstract Film in America Was Organized by Synchronization with a Musical Accompaniment

    The Emergence of Abstract Film in America Was Organized by Synchronization with a Musical Accompaniment

    EmergenceFilmFilmFilmArchiveinArchivesAmerica, The Abstract Harvard Anthology Table of Contents "Legacy Alive: An Introduction" by Bruce Posner . ... ... ... ... ..... ... ... ... ... ............ ....... ... ... ... ... .... .2 "Articulated Light: An Appendix" by Gerald O'Grady .. ... ... ...... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ... ... ... ... ... .... .3 "Cinema as a An Form: Avant-Garde " Experimentation " Abstraction" by Vlada Petric .. ... 3 "A New RealismThe Object" by Fernand Leger ... ........ ... ... ... ...... ........ ... ... ... ... .... ... .......... .4 "True Creation" by Oskar Fischinger .. ..... ... ... ... ... .. ...... ... ....... ... ........... ... ... ... ... ... ....... ... ........4 "Observable Forces" by Harry Smith . ... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ... ... ... ... ......... ... ... ... .......... ...... ... ... ... ......5 "Images of Nowhere" by Raul Ruiz ......... ... ... ........ ... ... ... ... ... ...... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ... ... .... ... ... ... 5 `TIME. .. on dit: Having Declared a Belief in God" by Stan Brakhage ..... ...... ............. ... ... ... .. 6 "Hilla Rebay and the Guggenheim Nexus" by Cecile Starr ..... ... ...... ............ ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...7 Mary Ellen Bute by Cecile Starr .. ... ... ... ... ...... ... ... ... ... ... ............ ... ...... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ... .............8 James Whitney studying water currents for Wu Ming (1973) Statement I by Mary Ellen Bute ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ...... ... ... ...... ... ... ... ... ..
  • Classical Myths and American Abstract Expressionism: the Case of William Baziotes

    Classical Myths and American Abstract Expressionism: the Case of William Baziotes

    http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-0319.19.08 Mercedes AGUIRRE Universidad Complutense di Madrid CLASSICAL MYTHS AND AMERICAN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: THE CASE OF WILLIAM BAZIOTES MITOS CLASICOS Y EXPRESIONISMO ABSTRACTO NORTEAMERICANO: EL CASO DE WILLIAM BAZIOTES El expresionismo abstracto puede ser visto como una expresión válida de la crisis del ‘hombre moderno’ y, como resultado de ello, asumió un papel central en el debate cultural de la época. Dentro de la crisis del hombre de entonces se enmarca también la nueva forma en que se representan los antiguos mitos. William Baziotes, un artista perteneciente al grupo de la New York School, se convierte en un moderno ‘constructor de mitos’ que crea metáforas y símbolos recurriendo a las culturas antiguas o primitivas o a mundos primigenios. Algunos de los cuadros de Baziotes aluden específicamente a un personaje o mito clásico, por ejemplo ‘Cíclope’, otros, sin tener un título que se refiera expresamente a un mito, parecen tener afinidades con ellos, de manera que los mitos clásicos parecen estar unidos a los propios e íntimos mitos del artista, interpretados con su propio lenguaje y sus propios símbolos. Palabras clave: Expresionismo abstracto, Baziotes, mitos, cíclope, ojo During the 19th and 20th centuries, and particularly in the context of artistic avant-garde movements in Europe and America, there is a break in the language of visual representation which is gradually liberating itself from the realistic and the figurative. Mythological painting – which, although inspired by themes from a world of unreality and fantasy, was fed by real images and forms – was transformed through new perspectives, incorporating symbolic and distorted images, so that the relationship between art and myth became less obvious (on myth in 20th century art, for instance, Bernstock 1993: 153–183).
  • Opticality and the Work of Morris Louis (1912-1962)

    Opticality and the Work of Morris Louis (1912-1962)

    CHAPTER 1 SITUATING MORRIS LOUIS 1912–1962 SITUATING MORRIS LOUIS 1912–1962 Although the work of the Washington–based artist Morris Louis (1912–62) is now discussed alongside some of the most well–known of the American abstract artists of the mid–twentieth century, much of Louis’ mature work, and arguably his most refined, was produced outside of public knowledge. For the majority of Louis’ career his work existed in relative obscurity, particularly in comparison with his contemporaries, artists such as Jackson Pollock (1912–56), Mark Rothko (1903–70) and Clyfford Still (1904–80). Being amongst the first generation of abstract artists in the United States, the newness of his abstract painting depended upon the endorsement of major critics for public appreciation.1 The critical recognition of Louis’ work emerged only with the support of Clement Greenberg in 1960, almost 30 years after he began working as an artist and only two years before his death. The timing of Greenberg’s writing positioned Louis amongst a new generation of artists including Frank Stella (1936 – ), Kenneth Noland (1924 –) and Jules Olitski (1922 –). Audiences were only beginning to appreciate Louis’ work as he entered the last phase of his career, and as such, the representation of Louis’ work only addressed a small period of his career. The limited exposure of Louis’ paintings prior to the early 1960s had major effects upon how his works were interpreted in the decades following his death. Many retrospectives and group exhibitions of Louis’ work came to relate his paintings to the work of younger artists engaging with ‘Colourfield’ abstraction.
  • Westbeth Other Names/Site Number Western Electric Company; Bell Telephone Laboratories; Bell Labs

    Westbeth Other Names/Site Number Western Electric Company; Bell Telephone Laboratories; Bell Labs

    NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 10024-0018 (Oct. 1990) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form This form is for use in nominating or requesting determinations for individual properties and districts. See instructions in How to Complete the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (National Register Bulletin 16A). Complete each item by marking “x” in the appropriate box or by entering the information requested. If an item does not apply to the property being documented, enter “N/A” for “not applicable.” For functions, architectural classification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the instructions. Place additional entries and narrative items on continuation sheets (NPS Form 10-900a). Use a typewriter, word processor, or computer to complete all items. 1. Name of Property historic name Westbeth other names/site number Western Electric Company; Bell Telephone Laboratories; Bell Labs 2. Location street & number 55 Bethune Street [ ] not for publication city or town New York [ ] vicinity state New York code NY county New York code 061 zip code 10014 3. State/Federal Agency Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended, I hereby certify that this [X] nomination [ ] request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements as set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property [X] meets [ ] does not meet the National Register criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant [X] nationally [ ] statewide [ ] locally.